Best Practices and Strategies

As an educator you have to present every day to your students or colleagues. It may be informal, it may be your daily lesson or it may be a very important lecture where the audience has to buy into the message.

No matter the type of presentation, it needs to be engaging so that your audience remembers the message and its main points.

There are best practices and strategies that can be followed to ensure a GREAT presentation. After learning these it will make it easier to choose the presentation piece of software to use with your audience.

You may have been creating presentations for years, but are they dynamic and engaging? Are there ways that you can create a better presentation to get your ideas across so that they are clear and memorable? You are going to go through the steps below to learn best practices and strategies for creating an inspiring and master presentation.

Steps:

1. The first thing is knowing your audience. Most likely your audience is going to be your students, but it may be a group you have never worked with before. If you don't know your audience, do some research ahead of time.

Think about 2-3 characteristics of your audience:

What does your audience MOST likely want to know about

What kinds of media will most likely appeal to your audience

How long a presentation will your group likely sit through without fidgeting or tuning out

2. Choose your message and/or goal for your presentation. Read this blog post from Brian Tracy a reknown author and public speaker. He outlines 16 ideas to create an excellent presentation. Your message needs to be clear, concise and compelling.

3. Watch this short video. The creator states the same thing as Tracy. Your message needs to be clear, concise and compelling and should be like a story with a beginning, middle and end. There are also excellent tips for designing your presentation.

4. Your message has to have a hook. No matter the topic, find something that will evoke interest immediately. It could be an image, a joke or an anecdote.

5. As you are completing the presentation, make sure to leave your audience with something to do with what they have learned. This is especially important if you are presenting to your students. There should be a clear task for them to complete.

6. You will want to make sure your presentation is organized as you begin putting it together. Begin by creating an outline of your presentation so that your presentation is well structured. Use one of the graphic organizers from the Visual Learning resources in 21Things4Teachers. You can use Bubbl.us, Popplet, Gliffy or your own favorite outline tool. In Visual Learning there are tutorials for each resource if you have not used them before.

7. The final thing you must be aware of once again is your audience. As you choose the application for your presentation, you need to know your audience and how you are going to CONNECT with them.

8. You have your message and/or goal, you have created an outline and now you need to choose the right application to connect with your audience.

21Things4Teachers is a project of the Regional Educational Media Center Association of Michigan. The REMC Association promotes the transformative use of technology and provides Michigan schools with access to educational resources to help teachers increase student success. For more information, visit remc.org, or connect with the REMC Association on social media at, facebook.com/REMCAssociation and twitter.com/REMCAssociation.